Various
Artists | Atlas Blues Explosion
This reviewer counts himself one lucky man,
having been fortunate enough to see performances by two of
the musical geniuses featured on Atlas Blues Explosion, which
rounds up 25 rocking postwar jump blues sides cut for New
York’s Atlas and Angle Tone labels. Last September
I caught the great Louisiana Red when he made a rare tour
stop at the Rosendale Cafe, and in my hometown of Cincinnati
I repeatedly witnessed the eccentric showman H-Bomb Ferguson
in all of his feather boa-wearing, sparkle-wigged, dirty
joke-telling glory. It’s interesting and cool to hear
Red here with a small horn section (he’s known for
a more stripped-down, Chicago style), and the tough tracks
by Piney Brown, James Wayne, Mojo Watson, the vibrato-voiced
Mae Mercer, and others also make this album a solid bet.
But it’s the great H-Bomb, unfairly written off by
many blues historians as merely a Wynonie Harris clone, who
rules the disc. The last of the postwar shouters, he died
in 2007, and if you’ve never felt the heat, the four
blasters here that Ferguson waxed for Atlas in the early ’50s
are just about as good an introduction as you could ask for.
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